Legislation

The Icelandic Parliament

The financial firms that are represented by Icelandic Financial Services Association are reglulated by the Icelandic The Financial Supervisory Authority. The Icelandic FSAs a regulatory organisation charged with the task of supervising financial enterprises.The Ministry of Economic Affairs has an English translation of various laws and regulations that concern banking and the financial market.

Iceland is a member of the European Economic Area (EEA). The Agreement on the EEA, which came into force in 1994, extends the Single Market of the European Union (EU) to three out of the four EFTA countries, namely Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Membership of the EEA has affected Icelandic legislation considerably. The EEA Agreement is based on the primary legislation of the EU, as developed over the past 30 years and on the relevant succeeding secondary legislation (Acquis Communautaire). To achieve homogeneity between the EEA and EU, the agreement incorporates hundreds of acts, largely identical to the relevant parts of the EC legislation, and these acts are made part of the internal legal order of the contracting parties. Importantly, this process is continuous; each month a number of pieces of EC legislation, relevant for the EEA, are incorporated in the agreement by decision of EEA Joint Committee.